Recap – Agents of HYDRA S04E16 – Agents of SHIELD Edition

At long last, the wait is over, Agents of Hydra has returned from it’s break. There seems to be some speculation that this may be the final season and the final story arc, I hope it’s a good one.

We pick right up in the world of The Frame Work, with Daisy, well, Skye in this world, at least for a while, spending most of the episode wandering around trying to make sense of this Hydra infested world.

Also Zombie Simmons. Ok, maybe she’s not a Zombie, but… she could be. She was shown during the teaser to be dead, and she woke up and had to dig herself out of a shallow grave. She also looks extremely rough throughout this episode, so maybe she is a Zombie.

There’s a bit of an important distinction to add as well, Daisy and Simmons came in through a backdoor, thus keep their normal knowledge of the real world, everyone else, has effectively been brainwashed, or at least suppressed by Aida into accepting the world at large.

Anyway, on to the spoiler section…

So, I want to try not to get quite so much detail in these, though I don’t want to make them quite as sparse as my Legion write ups. There’s bin quite a bit of speculation on this world and surprisingly a lot of it seems to have come true.

A lot of the crux of this world revolves around the original change, in the real world, before the series started, May went on a mission where she encountered a very young Inhuman girl, and killed her, since her power was killing agents. In The Framework, this girl was rescued, then she went on to kill people anyway, only much more publicly. This resulted in earlier distrust of SHIELD and HYDRA stepping up from the shadows and taking over. A secondary catalyst here is Coulson’s “regret” which was joining SHIELD and not living a regular life. In this world, he is a school teacher, and has always been one.

Some things we could infer from this, in the larger MCU, aside from “Aida didn’t program The Avengers into the simulation”. Let’s say we don’t have Coulson, so Tony gets kidnapped and briefly becomes Iron Man, before being killed by Obadiah without Coulson’s brief assistance. There’s also no Fury to later form the Avengers (more on that later).

With HYDRA in control of things, even if they happened upon Steve Rodgers in the Ice, they likely would have recognized him and offed him immediately, while he was frozen, being enemy No 1 to Hydra.

Or Aida just didn’t program them into the simulation.

Also Aida is Director of Hydra in the Framework, sort of symbolic of her position as Director f The Framework.

So aside from Daisy and Simmons wandering around figuring things out, and Coulson the teacher, we also encounter May and Fitz. May is pretty much May, only more hardcore, and a dedicated agent. Fitz is pretty greatly changed, without Simmons, it seems Fitz has become the poster boy of a Hydra higher up, clean cut hair, fancy suit, he seems to be head of the science division and all in.

We also briefly see Vijay Nadir, or at least the simulated version, being interrogated by Hydra, and eventually Ward and Daisy.

After a while Simmons gets found out by the authorities before managing to get in touch with Daisy, which leads to them being chased down by Hydra Agents, only to be rescued by Ward, who, is still a Double Agent, though this time he’s a secretly a SHIELD agent.

The Future

So, on what we know, in the previews we see the return of Mace, who seems to be The Director of SHIELD within The Framework, and the return of Radcliffe, which is interesting a bit since Radcliffe in the real world is dead. Some general speculation, they will recruit Agnes, who is also dead and in the Framework, and use her to infiltrate Hydra since she looks like Aida and would have the same biometrics.

No sign of Mack, though we know he’s there.

Supposedly, with this possibly being The End, there are going to be a bunch of cameos and throwbacks, and the return of Ghost Rider. I’m not sure how Ghost Rider would work in this world but it would be a nice way to wrap up the season. I also wonder if Daisy can get her powers back by contacting Terragin within The Framework or not. Ward mentions that she tested as an Inhuman, which he had covered up, so she is Inhuman, but she doesn’t have her powers, yet.